S. Parvis and Foster—Introduction: Irenaeus and His Traditions 9
framework in which such a method could be applied, when there is a prior theological
affirmation of belief in the only true God. Thus, Presley notes that Irenaeus limits the
potentiality of the method so that “the only possible divine referent found in scripture
is the one true God, and likewise any divine allusion must refer to either Father or the
Son.” Hence it is suggested that Irenaeus subordinates prosopological exegesis under
his overarching theological framework, or regula fidei, that acknowledges the neces-
sity of the prior commitment to the Father and Son as divine beings, to the exclusion
of the Gnostic plethora of divine intermediaries. Consequently, for Presley, Irenaeus
occupies a key place in the development of early trinitarian thought, particularly in
regard to the concept of person.
Sophie Cartwright explores another distinctive aspect of Irenaeus’s thought, his
theology of the image of God, throwing it into relief by comparing it to the same doc-
trine in two fourth-century theologians whom he much influenced, Eustathius of
Antioch and Marcellus of Ancyra. Like most patristic theologians, all of these writ-
ers understood scripture to teach both that Adam (and hence humanity in general)
was created in the image of God, and that Christ is the image of the invisible God.
Eustathius and Marcellus both followed Irenaeus’s distinctive teaching that it is Adam’s
body specifically that is in the image of God and that Christ renews and perfects the
image in Adam. Beyond this, however, the theological anthropology of the three differs
in significant and mutually illuminating ways. For Irenaeus, Cartwright argues, Christ
makes visible both what God is and what Adam is meant to be. This is because Adam
already resembles God, even before the incarnation; humanity, indeed, “has an onto-
logical affinity with God,” being connected with God by both pattern and substance
from its creation. On receiving the Holy Spirit, restored humanity becomes even more
intimately connected to God, to the extent, she claims, of “entirely relinquishing the
power of self-direction.” For Marcellus, meanwhile, humanity is radically unlike the
eternal God, and is in the image not of the eternal God but of God incarnate: Adam is
modelled on perfect Adam. But the incarnation itself is temporary: although human-
ity can only be saved by being united to God, once the eschatological restoration has
been achieved, humanity is left as the perfect creature, beloved of and saved by God,
who yet, being a creature, continues to be radically unlike God. For Eustathius, mean-
while, it is the eternal Son who is the true image of God; Christ is image of God in a
more attenuated sense, because of Eustathius’ strongly divisive Christology. The Word
is made visible through the “human being of God,” and the Word, as true image, then
makes known the whole Godhead. Eustathius thinks, like Irenaeus and Marcellus in
different ways, that Adam’s body is modelled on God, like a statue. But in Eustathius,
the human soul in both Adam and Christ serves to keep the Word to some extent at a
distance from its image.
Paul Parvis, again, in a typically learned and thoughtful survey of the seven major
editions of Against the Heresies, looks at the way Irenaeus’s work was claimed for vari-
ous theological causes by its editors over the years, and Irenaeus himself to some extent
remade in their image. Erasmus, in 1526, saw Irenaeus as a man of eloquence, learn-
ing, and scriptural piety, but above all a man of peace. The editions of the Reformer
Gallasius in 1570 and the Franciscan Feuardent in 1575 were rather more interested in